There were some bad calls. People died, which happens and I know I'm not supposed to let it bother me but it did. So I felt a hesitation when I was assigned to the ambulance. I'd thought I wanted this responsibility for sheltering the flickering lives of other human beings. But it would come back to me unannounced, as I sat in a friend's living room with everyone around me laughing, or as I ran in the deepening afternoon towards the looming spires of the national cathedral. I tell myself again: there was nothing you could have done. And it's true, but I was still there. So on my shift at the squad I'd get assigned to the ambulance and I'd think no calls... no calls tonight.

The rescue squad is different. A big wreck out on the Beltway, and the squad's job is to secure the car, maybe tear it up with the hydraulic tools, help the ambulance crew get to and extricate the patient. Then the ambulance and patient roar off, a diminishing sparkle of red flashing lights and fading peal of sirens, and you help clean things up a bit. Shattered glass glitters in vast constellations on the asphalt, and crunches under your heavy boots as you sweep it to the side of the highway. That beating life flees from you in the care of another person. It's not your responsibility any more.

When I'm on the ambulance and a call goes out, I hear the tones on the PA system. I hoof it to the dispatch office, grab the printout sputtering from the computer, and check who's on my crew. The driver and I slide into the front seats of the unit at the same time. "Where are we going?" the driver asks me, and I check the directions in the map books. We make sure that all the assigned probationary members are on board, and then we hit the street, lights and siren sparking up as leave the front ambulance bay. I take a couple deep breaths and look at the printout again to check the type of call. I think about what I'll need and yell some instructions back to the rest of the crew -- what equipment to bring along and so forth. It's fine. I do what I'm there to do.

The squad is different. When a squad call goes out it's accompanied by a deep bass buzzer, so loud and threatening that you can't breathe for a moment. And then I run -- flat out -- for my gear. Other people on the squad crew are running as well, and we slip around each other as we each dive for the running gear that's arrayed in racks around the edge of the ambulance bay. I yank my helmet off the top shelf, grab my jacket, bunker pants and boots, and sprint for the heavy rescue truck. This rush is necessary because we have to gear up before we make the call. So we all throw ourselves in the back of the truck, still pulling our bunker pants up and flipping the red suspenders over our shoulders, donning flame-resistant hoods, a heavy fire coat with its maze of snaps, and the helmet, as the vehicle pitches from side to side at high speeds in traffic. I gear up although I'm still of such low rank on the heavy rescue squad that I'm almost nonexistent. We don headsets; the noise in the cabin is so tremendous that this is the only way to communicate with the other members of the crew.

On the rescue squad it was easy to forget about the bad calls. I get a lot of shifts on the squad because I recently graduated from fire class and I'm supposed to be getting some more squad experience.

Inevitably, my shifts cycle me back on to the ambulance. There are plenty more calls, and a certain rhythm returns to them. Time begins to accomplish for me what I cannot do for myself.